A shower of ashes from a rent-by-the-
hour window blurred
the lover’s way but he
walked on, unopposed
in his drift.
So deep within himself
that the personal pronoun
no longer made sense,
Love, like a Mongol prince,
erected its horsetail pavilion.
The passport office was painted a goblin-
green, but so poorly
that the bald patches
held their own as purposeful
pattern.
The walls of the pavilion are a
startling red, deepening with
each new look, as though the
poles were arteries
gluttoned with blood.
Burning incense choked the alley, masked
the smell of boiling tires,
lending the sad stalls
a pall of dignity, holidays
long past their angelic green.
The horsetails which top the
tent-poles stand stark sideways,
floating the western wind.
One can look back and see
nothing but grassland.
His hope was a tower of dust, golden
in its spotlight. He had
failed triumphantly each
fickle task. She lived on
in a dream-shell he would
bruise his body on.
The in-gathering across the
emptiness of snow.
Tempered and clannish,
helmets blistered by weather,
wolfen eyes
made human with laughter.
He only asked for directions from children
and thugs, allowed himself
to lose track of his shadow,
shunned every shortcut,
read each bridge as spiral.
Such summons, such legends,
silk to bandage up the wounds
of old age. An unheard shout,
a fall at the ice-bound ford,
warriors clumsy with pain.
His love possessed him like vengeance,
he hunted each memory
to its nest, assassin
working his skillful way
down the diminishing list.
Kneeling beside the pavilion,
the sun hidden on the other
side, lightening the red
of the floating walls
to a pulse and ripple,
like an embryonic sea.
Her body, he told himself, had been pure
to itself, if not to him.
Those lips he’d kissed
and parted, now
regimental in their
nightly industry.
Snow whirls, settles on
grass, crystal grows opaque,
green stalks tottering in
their armor of glass, web-
work to hook and splice
each forced-out breath.
He sorted through the clues the locals set
before him, imagined
her silhouette moving
beyond each flap of
wallpaper, rotten with
monsoon’s slit-sleeve
seduction.
Allies first through
submission, then friends
by way of fire, companions
in the deepest gorge,
rancid with life, ecstatic
deaths beckoning them
to scale and climb.
A woman gestured to him from a pliant
doorway and he mistook
her stance, the casual
shoulder, berated himself
silently the outrageous
gamble of her opening blouse.
Pony’s blood, mixed with
yak’s milk, a skewer of
turnip and lamb.
Spittle blesses the newborns’
heads, demons are invited
to the edge of the tent,
bowls filled and misting.
He followed her up the stairs and down the
hallway with its mad
cartography of water
stains, stepped with her
into the alcove
where she stripped and
lay down on the floor.
What harm in boasting?
says the proudest of the
scarred uncles, dancing
drunkenly with his pig-
tailed nieces.
All the harm in the world,
say the sad-eyed women.
Yes? she said, and yes he nodded, lowering himself
to her spreading guide,
to thrust to an unprotected
gush, which felt, while
crying out, very much
like love.
If it takes a world to feed
my women and my children,
says the prince,
smiling from the entrance
of the saddle-cushioned
tent, then I will conquer it.
A thin stream of filth gentled down the middle
of the lane and he
watched as the children
skipped it zig-zag,
chanting a rhyme as
precious as it was rude.
We will begin there, he says,
pointing south, and we will
ride till we have not seen
snow for a year.
But not today, and not tonight.
The stream ended in a pool, its surface a blue blur
of pesticide and hardy
mosquitoes. The children
splashed and shrieked
and he waited, watching,
on the side of the long-way-
round.
The horsetails banner
horizontal in the wind.
Songs sung low over the
dying dervish fire,
the snores of the old men
and children, and a lamb
weeping in the wind.
He approached them with her photograph
and they held it gingerly,
giving her a name
and telling him the
color of her front door,
and asking if he knew
the way and if not,
then why not?
He cannot sleep,
this prince among
dreamers, and rakes
the fire as one would
brush a horse’s mane,
the soft mounds of
white ash no longer
reflections of snow
but the walls of strange cities.
What is it she does? he asked, half-tease, half-
dread. A shirtless boy
seized the littlest of his
female companions,
sank to his knees,
face pummeling the
fork of her violet shorts.
He strokes the flames
to dance for him,
imagines a dream
he will have before dawn,
in which the secrets
of ladders and tunnels,
feint and deception,
will reveal themselves before his eyes.
That is what she does, the boy said, his smile aggressive,
his laughter contagious,
even the bewildered
little girl giggling as she
shuffled backwards
out of his strange embrace.
Siege engines he has
barely heard of,
gigantic mantises made of
wood and rope,
like a boat perhaps,
but beached, crawling
no one knows how
towards a bristling
parapet of wide eyes and open mouths.
He caresses the dried blood-dot on his lobe, bitten
mid-throe, knees and
knuckles scuffing the
dust on the stone floor,
his groin ramming
the grip and clasp
of her cum-scummed heavenly star.
The prince wants the things
these strangers love.
Their horses, their women,
their heads, to pile high
and gallop past, a wailing
like arrowheads digging at his ears.